Twitter to ban users from promoting rival social media platforms
Twitter declared on Sunday that users will no longer be able to promote their accounts on a number of competing for social networking sites, such as Facebook and Instagram. However, just hours later, the site’s mercurial owner Elon Musk appeared to retract the new rule.
The abrupt rule change was the most recent in a string of divisive modifications made by Musk since he took over the firm in October. As a result of the upheaval, an increasing number of users are now urging followers to view their postings on other websites.
Even his position as CEO of Twitter was put up for vote by the erratic billionaire.
“Should I step down as head of Twitter?” he tweeted, asking the site’s users to click yes or no.
“I will abide by the results of this poll,” he added, with the vote open until the early hours of Monday.
Twitter had announced that the company would “no longer allow free promotion of specific social media platforms.”
“At both the Tweet level and the account level, we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms, such as linking out (i.e. using URLs) to any of the below platforms on Twitter, or providing your handle without a URL,” the company explained in a statement.
Users would thus be barred, for example, from posting “Follow me @username on Instagram,” Twitter said. Jack Dorsey, a co-founder of Twitter, tweeted the word “Why” in response to the new policy.
Twitter to ban users from promoting rival social media platforms
Musk tweeted that the policy would be limited to “suspending accounts only when that account’s *primary* purpose is the promotion of competitors” rather than taking into account specific tweets after a number of well-known accounts, including tech investor Paul Graham, were suspended as a result of the new rule.
He later said: “Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again.”
